


The Reaper and the Flowers

by Anonymous



Category: Tokyo Babylon, X -エックス- | X/1999
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Post-Final Day, animal cruelty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 10:42:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6048520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Subaru is called to unward an apartment that turns out to have been Seishirou's before his death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reaper and the Flowers

Subaru laid a trembling hand on the cherry blossom wood door. It stood to reason that Seishirou would ward his apartment with the symbol of his clan. The wards were weakening after the previous Sakurazukamori’s death, but that hadn’t stopped them giving the property agent trouble.

 

The first agent to take on the property had merely gone insane the instant that he placed his hand on the doorknob. The police officer who had come by after had beaten his partner into a coma in a fit of inexplicable rage.

 

It had been the police officer that had got the State interested, and once the State was interested it was only a few days until they called in the Sumeragi.

 

That was how, after almost ten years of searching, Subaru finally found the Sakurazukamori’s lair.

 

Subaru’s donated eye burned. His vision blurred behind pained tears as the wards tried to both welcome Seishirou’s eye and expel the Sumeragi himself. He closed his eyes against disgusting, pulling sensation, concentrating as much spiritual energy as he could into his palm against the door.

 

He wasn’t as strong as he had been in the Final Day, but he was still far from weak. The power of the Sumeragi and Sakurazuka clans rested with him, inside him, and those were two of the strongest bloodlines for omyoujitsu.

 

Besides, even if he did push too hard, it wasn’t like Seishirou’s wards could damage him any further. He was already insane - he knew it in a vague way like you know your eyes are brown or your nose is cold - and he would only grow worse as he forced himself to occupy two roles that should never have been joined in the same person.

 

A mark burned on the door. Subaru could feel something watching him. He opened his eyes, glancing to the right of the door where he felt the presence.

 

A hawk watched him, eyes sharp and unfeeling. Subaru saw that expression every day, staring at him from the mirror through his right eye.

 

“He’s gone. You have nothing to protect anymore,” Subaru told the hawk. It didn’t move, continuing to merely stare at him, but the wards loosened.

 

_ Subaru-kun… _

 

The word whispered through the hall like a fervent prayer, before it slipped into background noise. Subaru let his hand fall away from the door as it slowly swung open.

 

Seishirou had expected him to come.

 

He was tempted to run, to put distance between himself and the apartment of the man he’d killed. Yet the Sumeragi in him wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t trust Seishirou not to have boobytrapped his entire apartment, not just the door. He would  _ have _ to investigate.

 

If he didn’t then Sakurazuka Seishirou might still have more victims.

 

He took a ginger step inside. A flap of wings told him the hawk had taken flight.

 

Subaru had expected an apartment like his own - bare, minimalist, barren - but he was wrong. Seishirou’s apartment proved that the man had not just existed. He had been  _ alive _ .

 

There was a comfortable couch along one wall, an indent in one cushion showing its owners preferred spot. Before it was a kotatsu, its blanket already draped under the tabletop to prepare for a winter Seishirou had never seen. A strangely optimistic gesture for someone who had been a Dragon of Earth.

 

On the kotatsu were some receipts, some change, an unwashed mug that had long since evaporated its contents and a VHS of  _ Armageddon _ . Subaru couldn’t even manage a wry smile at what Seishirou probably thought had been a grand joke.

 

He glanced down at the receipts. Mr Donut. Dry cleaning. Cat food. A shinkansen stub for Kyoto.

 

Seishirou had apparently left Tokyo for a week before his death, though there were no clues from his receipts as to why. Subaru guessed that should tell him all he needed to know. It had clearly been Sakurazukamori business.

 

He stepped out of the lounge and opened the door to the kitchen. It was a mess. Something had strewn trash all over the floor. Subaru could smell the trash that had long since needed to be taken out, but also something else. Something sweet and cloying. He followed to where the scent was strongest, the refrigerator, and pulled it out to find the source.

 

The cat was half-decomposed. It had clearly crawled behind the refrigerator unit to die. Probably when it had realised that it was going to starve to death and its master was never going to return to feed it.

 

Subaru grimaced, but stepped back. There was nothing to be done. The cat was dead and Subaru couldn’t help it now.

 

He turned his back on the kitchen. In the laundry room he found clothes left in the drier, crumpled and cold. The bathroom was clean but the water had long since been switched off, meaning that there was stagnant water sat in the cistern that he quickly flushed away.

 

There was only one room left to check. The bedroom.

 

Somehow, Subaru felt it was more invasive to go there than anywhere else in the apartment. If there were a ward there that could be triggered, he had to deactivate it. He could not leave a stone unturned in this place. He knew that he would never be able to return once he left.

 

He opened the door to the bedroom, stomach churning.

 

The bed was made, but there was creasing on the covers. Someone had sat there. Subaru laid a hand against the rumpled blankets.

 

Had Seishirou sat here, contemplating their fight on the bridge? Or had this been where the cat curled to sleep, before Seishirou had locked it in the kitchen and left it to its inevitable starvation?

 

Subaru circled around the bed, feeling uneasy about touching it, and opened the wardrobe. He could sense nothing in the room that would be dangerous, and yet he couldn’t help but be suspicious. Seishirou had warded the door so strongly… Had it really just been to prevent cold callers and insistent neighbors?

 

Subaru ran a hand down a hanging suit. Hugo Boss. Seishirou had died in Armani.

 

Subaru closed the wardrobe again. There were no boxes of personal items, no chests, no suspicious scrolls. This… Had it been the home of Seishirou, the  _ man _ ? Was this not the home of the Sakurazukamori?

 

Something finally caught his eye. By the bedstand there was a book. An envelope was being used as a bookmark. Subaru picked it up.

 

The title was in English, though Subaru could guess vaguely that it was a poetry anthology.

 

He let it fall open to the marked page, removing the envelope from between the pages it. The poem it marked had been carefully translated into Japanese in Seishirou’s careful, neat script. So different from the scrawl he’d used as the veterinarian Subaru had known as a child.

 

_ There is a Reaper, whose name is Death, _

_  And, with his sickle keen, _

_ He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, _

_  And the flowers that grow between.  _

 

_ "Shall I have naught that is fair?" saith he; _

_  "Have naught but the bearded grain? _

_ Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me, _

_  I will give them all back again." _

 

_ He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes, _

_  He kissed their drooping leaves; _

_ It was for the Lord of Paradise _

_  He bound them in his sheaves. _

 

Here Subaru paused, frowning. Seishirou… he had known what would happen when he went to Rainbow Bridge, and yet he had gone anyway… But not before translating this poem.

 

_ "My Lord has need of these flowerets gay," _

_  The Reaper said, and smiled; _

_ "Dear tokens of the earth are they, _

_  Where He was once a child.  _

 

_ "They shall all bloom in fields of light, _

_  Transplanted by my care, _

_ And saints, upon their garments white, _

_  These sacred blossoms wear."  _

 

_ And the mother gave, in tears and pain, _

_  The flowers she most did love; _

_ She knew she should find them all again _

_  In the fields of light above.  _

 

_ Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath, _

_  The Reaper came that day; _

_ 'T was an angel visited the green earth, _

_  And took the flowers away.  _

 

And there, written carefully beneath the last line were Seishirou’s finally words.

 

_ Doesn’t it make you think of Hokuto-chan, Subaru-kun? _

 

Subaru stared at the poem for a long time, trying to divine its meaning. He ran his fingers over the words over and over again until the pencil markings that Seishirou had left behind began to smudge across the paper.

 

Seishirou had always communicated in half-truths and riddles, and even after death, in a place where by all rights, Seishirou had no reason to hide, he still continued to dodge direct answers to Subaru’s questions. Subaru could not understand Seishirou’s final message to him any more than he could understand why the man had ensured his own death by Subaru’s hand.

 

His cell phone beeped, breaking the poem’s spell on him. He placed the book down, replacing the bookmark carefully and then reading into his pocket.

 

It felt sacrilegious for the world of the living to permeate these walls.

 

The message was from Kamui. Subaru closed his eyes, blocking out the bed, the book, the lingering smell of rotting flesh, trash and stagnant water.

 

He had thought, perhaps, that there would be closure here. A letter addressed to him, a diary, some kind of message that would explain everything clearly. That would tell him why things had turned out the way they had.

 

But Seishirou was Seishirou.

 

There was no comfort to be found here. There was no secret message, no explanation, no peace to be found. Just a dead cat, a poem about a  _ shinigami _ and a VHS months overdue.

 

Subaru opened his eyes.

 

He walked out of the apartment on steady legs. Once he was free of the building he would call the property agents, tell them that he had ensured the apartment was safe, and then he would never visit this neighbourhood again.

 

He stepped outside, taking a deep breath of January air. It was cold and dry and bitter. He drew cigarettes from his pocket, Mild Sevens, and brought one to his lips. Soon the air smelled of tobacco smoke instead.

 

He opened the message from Kamui, looking at the pixels spelling out simple words.

 

_ [Come home.] _

 

Subaru thought about the Seals house, of their laughter and cooking, of their trinkets and scattered papers. He thought of Seishirou’s apartment, a time capsule of the day he died. He thought about his own apartment, bare but for a chair, everything else beneath dust sheets. He thought of Kyoto.

 

Seishirou had been to Kyoto, had he not, the week of his death. Perhaps there would be answers there?

 

Subaru dropped the cigarette butt to the floor, crushing it beneath his heel and turned towards the station.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem is "The Reaper and the Flowers" by Henry Longfellow : http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=89


End file.
